============================|============================ Above the Average | Below the Average (Cis-Rhenal Territory). | (Cis-Rhenal Territory). ----------------------------+---------------------------- The Upper Palatinate 18 % |Central Franconia 1 % Upper Franconia 80 ,,|Swabia 63 ,, Lower Franconia 178 ,,|Upper Bavaria 99.2 ,, |Lower Bavaria 99.5 ,, ========================================================= The great difference between these figures is explained by the fact that in Lower Franconia only a quarter of the woods are privately owned (the rest belonging to corporations, etc.). In Upper Bavaria the private forests are 92%, and in Lower Bavaria 96½% of the whole. Besides, the price of wood is very high in Lower Franconia. Once more, then, economic conditions are the cause of crime. Upon the movement of the figures for mendicity Dr. Mayr remarks that they are strongly influenced by the cost of the primary necessities. “The parallel movement of the food-price and mendicity offers little to astonish us if we learn from the statistics of crimes that the objective difficulty or ease of getting food resulting from the fluctuations in price, exercises a direct influence upon increase and decrease of serious crimes against property. It is explicable that only a small portion of individuals who become economically dependent proceed to serious crime, while the majority fall into the minor misdemeanors involved in a living obtained through begging and vagrancy. The same force that appears in the increase and decrease of attacks upon property, must consequently appear much more intensively in the fluctuations of mendicity and vagrancy.” BAVARIA. [42]